


Born This Way

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [5]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6859174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a> prompt: "This time, Rodney had to admit he needed help." 38 Minutes ends differently when John Sheppard is half-vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born This Way

Rodney was no medical doctor. As much as he scoffed at the soft sciences - most doctors were barely a step above snake oil salesmen - they had their uses. Right about now, the team could use Beckett’s knowledge and experience, because this situation - Major Sheppard on the floor of the jumper, an alien bug latched to his neck trying to suck the life out of him - was not something Rodney’s education or research had prepared him for.

This time, Rodney had to admit he needed help.

Elizabeth said she had Zelenka and Kavanagh on it, but that was hardly comforting, because Zelenka could barely speak English and Kavanagh was a moron. Rodney didn’t dare say so, though, lest he upset Major Sheppard, who was very pale and holding very, very still.

“Just so I’m clear,” Sheppard said, “this bug is attached to me, no one wants to take it off of me because no one likes the sound I make when they try, and also we’re stuck in the gate, which will shut off in 38 minutes and kill Stackhouse and Markham instantly and the rest of us slowly.”

“We do not wish to hurt you, John.” Teyla patted his shoulder anxiously.

Sheppard huffed. “I’ll take being hurt over being killed.”

“Sir,” Ford protested.

Sheppard sucked in a breath. “Ford, when I tell you, rip it off of me.”

“It could rip your throat out!” Rodney cried.

“Do you trust me?” Sheppard asked.

“Not while you’re incapacitated like that,” Rodney snapped. He tapped his radio. “Do you have anything yet?”

“Still working on it,” Elizabeth said tersely. “Why?”

“Because Sheppard is making crazy requests.”

“Crazy how?”

“He wants us to just pull the bug off of him,” Rodney said.

There was a muffled conference, and then Beckett came over the radio. “Don’t let him do it.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Rodney turned back to Sheppard, who was being restrained by Teyla and Ford so he didn’t try to just pull the bug off himself.

“I can’t let you do that, sir.” Ford kept his tone calm and even. Rodney was impressed at the kid’s focus, because Rodney was finding it impossible to focus on the problem at hand. He tore into the control panels, trying to scan the systems, but he didn’t know enough about how the jumper was wired and programmed to be able to make a good estimate about where the thruster pod secondary controls were located. Basically he was just fumbling randomly at the control crystals and hoping and praying.

Elizabeth kept checking in with how much time they had left - ever decreasing - and no sign of answers from whichever idiots called themselves scientists. Sheppard was still struggling to remove the bug himself, and hadn’t he reported spreading paralysis to Beckett? Because he was fighting an awful lot.

“Two minutes,” Elizabeth said.

And Rodney had to take a gamble. The control crystal blinked. So did his data pad. “I did it! But - why aren’t we moving? We’re not not moving!” And then he realized. “Dammit. Inertia.”

“What do we do?” Ford demanded.

Sheppard snarled. “Let me get this bug offa me. I can handle it!”

Over the radio, Kavanagh burst out with, “Blow the rear hatch!”

Rodney did, without question, and the jumper shot forward.

It landed in the gate room without a hitch, because Stackhouse and Markham wouldn’t have known about the delay, kept on piloting like normal.

Rodney sank back against the bench, willing his heart rate back down to normal. Why had he frozen? Why hadn’t he been able to help Sheppard? He’d gotten lucky and then Kavanagh of all people had been smart -

Teyla screamed, “John, no!”

Sheppard roared, pitched Ford back with an almighty heave, and tore the bug off of his throat. There was blood everywhere. Sheppard staggered to his feet, and his eyes - normally so many different colors, changing with every shift of the light - blazed silver. He drew his sidearm and blasted the bug into kingdom come, while people outside the jumper screamed.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rodney cried.

“Rodney,” John breathed, “I’m so sorry.”

“Sheppard, what -?” Rodney jumped up, caught Sheppard before he fell. “We need medics in here. We need -!”

Sheppard caught him in a crushing embrace, lowered his head, and tore Rodney’s throat out.

For an instant there was blazing agony, and then…

Oh. _Oh._

Sheppard was nuzzling at Rodney’s throat, his soft hair brushing Rodney’s chin, nipping and licking, and heat curled through Rodney’s blood. He could feel Sheppard’s tongue and teeth and his lips grazing Rodney’s skin, over and over and over again. Rodney gasped, clutching helplessly at Sheppard’s shoulders, and then the world - faded.

Rodney was no longer in the jumper in the gate room. He was in outer space. A galaxy. Multiple galaxies, where stars and planets and nebulae swirled and swarmed, danced and marched, physics and math come to life in a sparkling, glowing harmony. In the heart of a spinning galaxy was a single, brilliant point of light. Rodney started toward it, and it extended. Grew. Until it was a shining silver cord, and he followed it.

It led into another world, another plane of existence, endlessly empty skies without sun or moon or clouds. Some patches were perfect summertime blue, criss-crossed by the vapor trails from a jet. Some were the watery grey of a rainy day, others the black wall of a tornado, or the opaque white that preceded a fierce winter storm. The silver cord wended all the way through it, and somehow, Rodney knew.

This was John’s mind.

The sky rumbled. Lightning flashed, and for one instant John’s mind was as bright as the noonday sun, and Rodney thought, _I know you._

And he did. He knew everything and nothing about John. Knew John was _his_ , belonged to Rodney and fit with him irrevocably and they were supposed to share souls from this moment onward. But he didn’t understand the black flower petals that rained down from the stormclouds, or why John’s eyes constantly shifted color, and he didn’t understand why it hurt when the silver cord was tugged taut, stretched thin and thinner and thinner till it almost broke and -

“Get the hell off of him, Sheppard!”

Rodney opened his eyes, dazed. Several marines were strapping a thrashing John to a gurney, and one of them had a pencil aimed at his throat, though he looked confused at his choice of weapon.

“McKay,” Beckett said, his gentle tone a sharp contrast to the way he’d roared at Sheppard, “are you all right?”

“Yeah. Fine. Peachy, in fact. What happened?”

“We’ll discuss it later. Let’s get you to the infirmary.” Beckett signaled for orderlies to help Rodney, and then he crossed the gate room to where John was struggling. “I suspected what you were as soon as I saw your eyes, but you never fed. What the hell is going on?”

Rodney lifted a hand to his throat, which was throbbing, and his fingers came away wet with blood. Had John just bitten him?

With that, Rodney fainted.

When he came to, he was in the infirmary, wearing scrubs (thankfully not a hospital gown) and lying on a cot. Someone had propped him up with pillows and tucked a blanket around him, and there was an IV going into the back of his left hand.

Beside him, John was strapped down to his own bed like a prisoner. He was wide awake and staring at the ceiling and - Rodney stared. He looked completely whole and healthy. There was no wound on the side of his throat. Not even a scar.

John started to turn to him, and Rodney closed his eyes, stilled his breathing, but he was freaking out, because what he’d just seen was impossible.

“Rodney,” John said softly. “I know you’re awake.”

Rodney held very still and tried to project _asleep asleep asleep_ as much as possible.

John sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. I wish I could explain. I -”

“Major Sheppard.” Beckett sounded coldly furious.

“Doc. Elizabeth.”

“John,” Elizabeth said, “I think you owe me an explanation.”

There was a pause, and then John said, with deliberate casualness, as if Rodney were asleep, “As Beckett well knows, there are rules about that sort of thing.”’

“We’re in another galaxy, Major.” Beckett was unimpressed with John’s prevarication. “No one from the Council will know what you’ve said or who you’ve said it to, and they won’t be able to punish you. Although I’d have suspected, from your eyes, that you were an Elder or an Enforcer yourself.”

“Doctor?” Elizabeth asked. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Major Sheppard is a vampire. Not a made vampire, obviously, because no one over twenty survives the change,” Beckett said flatly.

Two months ago, Rodney would have said vampires didn’t exist, and then he’d encountered the Wraith, space vampires who sucked the life out of people. Yesterday, Rodney would have said Dracula vampires were still a myth, but then yesterday John Sheppard had done something to himself that should have been fatal and instead he’d bitten Rodney’s neck, drunk his blood, and now looked like he didn’t even have a scratch.

“A vampire?” Elizabeth said. “That’s -”

“Impossible? Not at all,” Beckett said.

“All of the children of the night are under orders never to disclose our true identities to humans,” John said, and he sounded amused. “Like the worst superhero social club ever. We’re probably cousins somewhere along the way, right Beckett? Pretty sure there’s a branch of the Harmans called Becketts.”

“Sheppard is a common enough name I didn’t think you were one of _those_ Sheppards.”

The way they were bandying names about was straight out of a bad regency novel, where the women sat around sniping at each other with backhanded insults over tea.

“What is going on?” Elizabeth demanded.

“Beckett’s not insane,” John said. “Vampires are real. As are witches and werewolves and a whole host of other animal shapeshifters. But he’s not entirely right. I’m only half vampire.”

“Half vampire?” Elizabeth echoed. “How does that work?”

Again with the studied nonchalance. “There are two types of vampires,” John said. “Those who are born vampires - we call them lamia - and those who are made vampires, who are a bit more like the type you see in movies. We’re all immortal, but lamia can age. They can also choose to stop aging.”

“Most choose to stop aging in their early twenties. Eternal youth.” Beckett sounded highly disapproving.

“How is someone born a vampire?” Elizabeth asked.

John said, with exaggerated patience, “Well, when two vampires love each other very much, they kiss and make a baby vampire.”

“Really?” Elizabeth was so shocked she was unfazed by John’s blatant insolence.

“Yes.”

“You said you were half vampire.”

“My mother was a vampire. My father is not.”

Rodney’s mind spun. John wasn’t fully human. It made sense. Vampires could hold people in their thrall, right? To lure them in to be food. It was why he was so charming, why he could get away with being such a punk, why Teyla had listened to him and trusted him in the beginning.

“How old are you, really?” Beckett asked.

John sighed. “As old as it says in my file. Look, I’m only half, right? That’s why you’ve never noticed signs of me feeding on anyone, because I don’t feed on people. I don’t have to. I’m functionally human, as far as combat skills go. If I start feeding on people, then yes, I gain typical lamia traits - enhanced senses, speed, strength, healing.”

“You fed on Rodney,” Elizabeth said.

“So I wouldn’t die. And I’m going to pay for it over the next few days. It won’t be pretty.”

“What do you mean?” Beckett asked.

“By drinking Rodney’s blood and triggering vampiric healing, I triggered everything else vampiric in me. Strength. Speed. Telepathy. And the continued need for blood. But I don’t plan on living like a lamia. So I’ll have to starve myself off of blood for the next three days and essentially die as a vampire so my human side can assert itself once more. Someone should inform Ford he’ll have to command while I’m down and out.”

“You say that like I’m going to let you resume command when this is done,” Elizabeth said.

“Ma’am, with all due respect,” and now John chose to sound like a deferential soldier, “what I am biologically has never affected my ability to serve.”

“You attacked Rodney. He could have died.”

“He wouldn’t have. I know how to restrain myself. And when he wakes, he won’t even have a scar to remember me by.”

“Vampire saliva heals bite wounds,” Beckett said sourly.

“I could make him forget, if he wanted. While my telepathy still works.”

Rodney knew that statement was directed at him, but he kept his head down and his eyes closed, still feigning sleep.

“I’ll leave that up to him,” Elizabeth said.

So that strange silver cord stretching between John’s mind and Rodney’s, that must have been John’s vampire telepathy kicking in while he drank Rodney’s blood.

“In the meantime,” Elizabeth said, “you need to tell me everything about your condition and whether it’s something I need to be concerned about on an expedition-wide basis.”

“Without my vampiric senses, I can’t tell immediately who is and isn’t a night child,” John said. “But if you know what to look for, you can see it. The way they move, if they’re not human.”

Beckett had known what John was immediately. Was he also a vampire? He didn’t act like one, sounded like he rather disdained vampires. So what was he?

“Well talk about this later,” Elizabeth said. “In the meantime, Carson, how is Rodney?”

“Physiologically, he’s fine,” Beckett said. “Once he wakes up, I can discharge him. I’d recommend we send him to Heightmeyer for a check-up, only she doesn’t know about, well.”

Elizabeth sighed. “This is going to take more than one conversation, isn’t it?”

“It’s a whole new world out there, been happening under your noses since the dawn of time. On the other hand,” John said, “if my theory is correct, there might be a bigger pool of ATA gene carriers to draw from than the SGC originally thought.”

“I suspected as much myself,” Beckett admitted.

Elizabeth sighed again. “Right. Later. In my office.”

Her footsteps faded, as did Beckett’s. Rodney wanted to open his eyes, but he didn’t dare, and eventually, he fell asleep.

When he woke again, someone had drawn the curtains around John’s bed. Beckett discharged Rodney, said he was fine, and that he ought to have a chat with Heightmeyer, who had been briefed on the situation.

Rodney didn’t go speak to Heightmeyer, though, just dove back into work. He didn’t see John for a few days, instead saw Ford nervously tromping around the city in John’s shoes, attempting to command NCOs far older and more experienced than him. Ford tried to go to the infirmary to speak to John and get advice more than once, but John had been moved to a quarantine room, Beckett said, just in case the bug had infected him with anything.

Rodney knew the bug hadn’t infected John with anything, that John was in agony. Rodney knew because he’d woken in the night, feeling like his whole body was on fire. He opened his mouth to scream instinctively, and then the sensation was gone, winking out in a flash of silver, silver like that cord he’d seen during his brief telepathic connection with John, and Rodney wondered if John hadn’t done anything else to Rodney while he was feeding off of him.

Feeding off of him, like a Wraith or one of those bugs. No wonder he didn’t do it if he didn’t have to.

When John was released from the infirmary, he looked like his old self, charming smirk and messy hair. He was full of sarcasm and ridiculous bravery, but once in a while, Rodney had the strangest sense that he could feel what John was feeling, and he was miserable.


End file.
